Making scenes shimmer
Christine Bodnar, Changing Light, pastel, 17 x 21.
This story was featured in the November 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art November 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
TO SAY CHRISTINE Bodnar is busy these days is an understatement. The Marshfield, MA, artist teaches graphic design and visual art full time to middle-school and high-school students. After work, she regularly dashes off to her studio to paint, and on Monday and Tuesday evenings, she grabs her sketchbook and heads to the life-drawing sessions offered in the same building where her studio is located. Come summertime, when many school teachers like to slow down and unwind, Bodnar instead travels to her native Michigan to teach painting classes on Beaver Island.
“Just keep painting” is a mantra that has long fueled the artist. She recalls a time, about 25 years ago, when she was taking classes at both the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. As she chatted casually with a professor one day, she mentioned that she was thinking about getting her master’s degree in art. His advice surprised her: “Just keep painting. Don’t worry about getting a degree.”
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- Christine Bodnar, Another Memento, pastel, 16 x 12.
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- Christine Bodnar, Cape Dunes, pastel, 12 x 9.
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- Christine Bodnar, On the Edge, pastel, 15 x 17.
And so, Bodnar just kept painting, soon branching out from figurative work, with influences of Degas and Cézanne, into the world of landscape painting, honing her skills en plein air and in her studio. Today she is equally at home capturing the marshes and sand dunes around her home on the South Shore or portraying the urban landscapes and passersby of bustling East Coast cities. Although she also works in oils and acrylics, pastels are her go-to medium, particularly when painting on location and on a smaller scale. With their unique mark-making and blending capabilities, they’ve helped Bodnar become looser, more inventive, and sometimes even abstract in her approach. She might depict a river, for example, with only a few gestural strokes of color and boldly defined but broken lines, allowing the vibrancy of her medium to shine through. “I like to make things shimmer,” she explains. “And I do a lot of underpainting to make colors vibrate.”
The freshness and immediacy of pastels make them second to none in Bodnar’s eyes. “People are falling in love with this medium,” says the artist, who recently achieved Eminent Pastelist status with the International Association of Pastel Societies. “There’s a renaissance in pastels right now, and I’m glad I’m a part of it.” —Kim Agricola
representation
N.W. Barrett Gallery, Portsmouth, NH; Powers Gallery, Acton, MA; www.christinebodnar.com.
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- Christine Bodnar, Sandy Neck Dunes, pastel, 18 x 17.
This story was featured in the November 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art November 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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